1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to distortion in transmitters. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and a system for determining the nonlinear distortion of a transmitter included in a gigabit Ethernet transceiver.
2. Description of Related Art
Receivers that use digital signal processing modules, such as linear equalizers and cancellers, are particularly sensitive to nonlinear distortion that are present in the received signals. Severe nonlinear distortion would cause erroneous decoding of the received signals. The major contributor to the nonlinear distortion in a transmission channel is the corresponding transmitter.
In a Gigabit Ethernet communication system that conforms to the 1000BASE-T standard, two gigabit transceivers are connected via four twisted pairs of Category 5 copper cables and are in full-duplex bi-directional communication with each other. There are four constituent transceivers in each gigabit transceiver. The full-duplex bi-directional communication implies that each constituent transceiver is transmitting simultaneously on the same twisted pair of cable with a corresponding remote constituent transceiver. This simultaneous transmission would stress the analog components of the transmitter of a constituent transceiver. This stress would cause the transmitter to produce more nonlinear distortion. Thus, nonlinear distortion is an important problem in Gigabit Ethernet communication system.
In addition, the bi-directional nature of the Gigabit Ethernet communication system requires the use of echo cancellers in the gigabit transceivers. Since the echo cancellers are very sensitive to nonlinear distortion, nonlinear distortion must be kept, by design of the transmitters, at an acceptable level. The 1000BASE-T standard specifies that the peak nonlinear distortion of each constituent transceiver, when under test with no intervening cable, must be less than 10 millivolts.
Therefore, there is a need for techniques for determining nonlinear distortion of a transmitter, particularly, for a transmitter included in a constituent transceiver of a gigabit Ethernet transceiver.